Thursday 11 December 2014

PIXELBERG BETA

INTRODUCING PIXELBERG:
PixelBerg is a realtime viewport renderer for C4D aimed mainly at realtime artists. PixelBerg comprises of 3 main components which all function together to produce high quality realtime visuals in the c4d viewport by means of physical based shading, IBL and selected post FXs.

C4d Viewport screen grabs of pixelberg in action with different enviroment maps



IMPORTANT!Pixelberg is a realtime opengl viewport renderer so if you try to render using the c4d render buttons the output will be black. I do plan on adding traditional render output for completness however Pixelbergs main focus will remain as a realtime renderer. That said if you set the render engine to “Hardware” the render buttons will produce the viewport output allowing you to produce/grab renders larger than the viewport size.  PB 1.8 now has support for the standard renderer

PRICE AND AVAILABILTY
Version 1.8 (BETA) is available to buy and download now at Pay What You Want Price. minimum $1


REQUIERMENTS:
C4D r15, r16 ,r17 (64bit only)
A Windows PC or MAC
Graphics Card supporting at least Opengl 3.2



LATEST VERSION IS 1.8 please see the 1.8 release post for details

INFORMATION:

WHAT IS PBS: Physical based shading (PBS) means that the shading algorithms are based on real world obsivations and physical properties allowing artists to create content that will be consistently high quality and predictable in many lighting scenarios.

WHAT IS IBL: Image Based lighting (IBL) uses preprocessed cubemaps describing an enviroment to provide convincing ambient ligting and specular reflections.

WHAT ARE POST FX: Post FX are just what they sound like effects applied after all the main drawing, rendering calls- These effects can be as simple as just exposure adjustments to more complicated effects like realtime amient occlusion.

WHATS INCLUDED:
  • PIXELBERG SKY: object plugin responsable for providing the IBL lighting ,viewport background, directional light control and enviroment map conversion utility.
  • PIXELBERG MATERIAL: material plugin which is the physical based shading component.
  • PIXELBERG POST: post Fx plugin providing the realtime post effects.
  • PIXELBERG WATERMARK: Bonus - post Fx plugin providing a watermark that altough it defaults to a pixelberg logo it can be easly changed by the user.
  • PIXELBERG SKY MATERIAL: Can be used either as a shadow catcher when assigned to a plane or as a source of GI etc for standard materials when added to a C4D sky Object.
  • PIXELBERG ENVIRONMENT RENDER: Bonus - post Fx plugin that allows you to create environment maps (spherical camera).

+example scenes and textures : I would like to give a special thanks to Grzegorz at hdrmaps and Bernhard Vogal  for allowing me to include a couple of their Hdr enviroment maps for you to play with (please see their respective sites for liscene information)

DISCLAMER:While great time and effort has been put into PixelBerg to ensure its usability and functionality it is important to remember that its is still in a beta stage and thus requires the following disclaimer: The software is provideded “as is”. I do not give any warranties, whether express or implied, as to the suitability or usability of the software. I will not be liable for any loss, whether such loss is direct, indirect, special or consequential, suffered by any party as a result of their use of the software or content. Use of the software is done at user’s own risk and the user will be solely responsible for any damage to any computer system or loss of data that results from such activities.

Should you encounter any bugs, glitches, lack of functionality or other problems please let me know.


Turntable animation of model with 2 different enviroments. The screen recorder seemed to slowdown viewport animation abit. I could ofcourse have rendered this out by setting the render engine to hardware but i want to emphasize that this is what the viewport output looks like.




MORE INFORMATION:
  1. PixelBerg Beta Tutorial Videos
  2. PixelBerg Beta QuickStart Guide
  3. PixelBerg Full Documentation (Ongoing)